k you should say it
was only a ha'penny!"

"I never said no such a thing. S'elp me!"

"''Apenny returned on the transaction' was the very identical selfsame
words." Thus Aunt M'riar testified. "And what is more," she added
inconsecutively, "I do not believe you've any such an aunt, nor yet ever
been to Chiswick."

But young potato-peelings, so called from his father's vocation of
costermonger, defended himself with indignation. "Warn't that square?"
said he. "He never said I warn't to keep it all, didn't that doctor!"
Then he took a high position as of injured virtue. "There's your
'apenny! There's both your 'apennies! Mean to say I 'aven't kep' 'em
safe for yer?" Uncle Moses allowed the position of bailee, but disposed
of the penny as Solomon suggested in the case of the baby, giving one
halfpenny to Michael, and putting the other in Dave's cat on the
mantelshelf.

He justified this course afterwards on the ground that the doctor's
refund was made to the actual negotiator, and that Aunt M'riar had in
any case received full value for her money. Who could say that the
doctor, if referred to, would not have repudiated Aunt M'riar's claim
_in toto_?

Warnings, cautions, and moral lessons derived from this incident had due
weight with Dave for several days; in fact, until his cut healed over.
Then he forgot them and became as bad as ever.

CHAPTER II

HOW DAVE FAILED TO PROFIT BY HIS EXPERIENCE. OF PAOLO TOSCANELLI
AND CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. OF A NEW SHORE DAVE AND DOLLY REACHED BY
EXPLORATION, ROUND THE CORNER; AND OF OTHER NAVIGATORS WHO HAD, IN
THIS CASE, MADE IT FOR THEMSELVES. OF THE PUBLIC SPIRIT OF DAVE AND
DOLLY, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF A _BARRAGE_. HOW MRS. TAPPING AND
MRS. RILEY HEARD THE ENGINES. OF A SHORTAGE OF MUD, AND A GREAT
RESOLVE OF DAVE'S. WHY NOT SOME NEW MUD FROM THE NEW SHORE?

The interest of Dave's accident told in the last chapter is merely
collateral. It shows how narrow an escape the story that follows had not
only of never being finished, but even of never being written. For if
its events had never happened, it goes near to certainty that they would
never have been narrated. Near, but not quite. For even if Dave had
profited by these warnings, cautions, and moral lessons to the extent of
averting what now appears to have been Destiny, some imaginative author
might have woven a history showing exactly what might have happened to
him if he had n